I didn't want my faction to have inadvertently out-numbered the rest of the Brikverse due to scale incongruities...

Including every ship that was present in this battle, dead or alive, TA or otherwise, there was a little over eleven-thousand, and when I planned things Out there was a little over five-thousand Briktoid ships. Then again, <a href='http://tinyurl.com/y42zurt'>alot</a> of those were crappy mass-produced frigates.

Onboard the Spirit of Ragnablok, Admiral Payton lay at the helm. Face down, with a hole in the back of her head.

Marko held the now-cold las-pistol in his hand. He was no longer an AN lieutenant, he was a Scythian lieutenant- and it was no longer his duty to take commands from the AN, but to eliminate enemy combatants. And the woman he was sharing beer and having a good time with before was now an enemy combatant.

The bridge was filled with Praetorians, and he remembered every single one of their faces as he madly sprayed laser fire into them. As he murdered the comms chief, he called all Scythians to the bridge, and together they held their position against all comers including Assyrians, Brittannians, and peaches. He was ordered to.

As the highest-ranking Scythian onboard, he was cleared to know of an elite stealth-kill team that would slowly make its way to the bridge. They would ensure that the Spirit of Ragnablok was sterilized of all other races before delivering it to its final destination, a KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN planet. He and the other Scythians continued to wait for the team to show up.

Suddenly, a mass of black and green warped into the system. Marko could just pick out red shapes of Scythian ships. A few seconds later, a group of those treacherous Praetorians also warped in, with five super-dreadnoughts.

The next part after this is the second most epic part, btw. Epic space battle-time

Kommander Alec looked up at the sky. He noticed that ship hulls began to fall to the ground, streaking the sky. The laser bolts flying through space were too tiny for him to see, but he could tell that something was very wrong.

RIN forces were having extraordinary difficulty breaking into the AN beer reserves, a vault designed to last the end of time itself. They were using mortars, explosives, the Bavarians even contributed miniature FLEIJA's, but the door stood stuck, trapping all the alcohol stored inside. It was the same story with the PAX Corps weapons depot.

He was so caught up in his thoughts, he never saw the dapper suited man sneak up behind him, unpinning an obsidian-black ball. He threw it, and Alec heard it clink onto the ground, but there was nothing he could do at that point. The ball burst into one of the most recognizable explosions in the galaxy, a beautifully perfect five by five by five purple sphere, so geometric even the Trattorians would compliment it.

Alec's dreadnought tripped, one of its legs ripped from real space. A hole opened in the armor, as the suited man approached him. Surprised RIN troops fired at the man, but he fearlessly took the shots and continued. The last three colors Alec saw was the golden barrel of a gun, red splattering over his eyes, and the world fading into black.

The space battle was a mess of light and metal. The Third Alliance fleet was well-protected by its shield of cheap Briktoid ships, organized in what was formally called a sideways paraboloid of revolution but better known as a bowl, but even it began to realize that USA carrier groups could be very ablative.

Casualties began to mount on both sides. A few RIN super-dreadnoughts had become trashed metal hulls, and the Trattorian Götterdammërung had had entire chunks of protective armor for its star-destroying cannon ripped away. On the other side of the field, though, hundreds of USA destroyers were fried food, entire ships cooked in this giant microwave over New York. A Praetorian Exodus hung uselessly, it's bridge blown out to the heavens above.

Then came the Brittannians, to flip the bird at its former rebellious colony, take revenge on the TA, and to further field-test those Cavorite turrets. At this point, nobody knew who to fire at, and ships simply aimed at the other nearest ships. Friendly fire didn't really matter on a battle of this scale. Cavorite guns ripped away dozens of Briktoid frigates with each shot, decimating the wall of formerly five-thousand frigates and exposing the juicy innards that laid within.

USA, Scythian, Praetorian, and Brittannian beams finally released their deadly kiss upon the Third Alliance. Battleships fell under the pain of hundreds of shots, shields were irrelevant when so much energy was thrown at them- the ships whose shields held through exploded violently under the stresses put on their generators.

But the Third Alliance wasn't going to lie down and take their fate like a dog. They used the enemy's greatest advantage against them, as Luchardsko fighter crews deftly directed Scythian antimatter projectors towards them through flashy maneuvers and then evaded the beam at the last second, leading the deadly column of pure antimatter straight into a cluster of USA ships. When a fighter was destroyed beyond hope of return, it again targeted those Scythians- their antimatter generators, hundreds of times more efficient than those of other races, also produced a boom a hundred times larger. Zweitekaiser Klaus celebrated when they managed to get a Monarch-class to crash into the USS Donald Reagan, obliterating about half of its turrets and tearing a hole straight down to the second flight deck.

The Scythians weren't the only ones being abused on the battlefield-as it turned out, the Brittannians' Cavorite ships were flimsy contraptions that could be destroyed with one good shot once the shields were broken. It wasn't long before the Cavorite rain stopped falling, until there were just a few inconsequential beams left. Siri gave the order to protect Der Vorsprung, and the TA fleet wrapped around it tightly. It was the one ship they couldn't afford to lose.

Admirals from all factions began to regret the genocide they were committing- but of course, they would forget the moment another volley of shots would shake their ship. By this point in time, there were only five thousand ships of all races left.

The battle was so intense, that nobody noticed the Praetorian fire petering off.

IR337| evacuated itself to a mass-produced frigate as the shields of its Conifer shell began to drain dramatically. It had managed to prove itself, even setting a new high score, but now fun-time was up. Thousands of enemy guns, including antimatter-projectors, XXL laser arrays, and Cavorite turrets, were bearing down on its ship-shell, fearing its impressive armament and it's hundreds of recorded kills in this battle alone. IR337| managed to download itself again just as its giant pine-cone exploded into a thousand pieces, the shields overloading the reactor.

That was when it began to itch.

IR337| normally didn't contemplate its own conscience very much, but it couldn't help but feel that something was in it. It flooded it with good feeling, overloading it's happiness routine as it slowly began to relinquish control of the command network...

That was when IR337| realized what was going on- a virus attack. Something was jamming itself in places where it wasn't wanted, and IR337| tried to kick it. But as much as it tried, it didn't want to lose the flood of happiness commands, and slowly found itself being overpowered by the virus. The virus ripped through its memory banks, found the administrative password for the command network, and issued an encrypted order. It then self-destructed, taking with it all the happiness commands.

In such a sudden absence of happiness, IR337| automatically activated its depression sub-routines. Deciding it no longer wanted to command the Briktoid fleet, it rammed itself, straight into a USA ship.

Scythian Captain Meinard carefully inspected their final hallway. In a SIBAS suit, he was wary of combatants despite the fact that they at this point were all probably dead. It was more of a tedious exercise than a dangerous one, really, he thought. In his mind, the SIBAS suit was provided more to keep the stench of corpses out than protect him.

And boy, was there a lot of fresh corpses.

He and his squad were cleaning out the entirety of the Spirit of Ragnablok, sweeping out every non-Scythian life form on the ship. The scale of the murder sickened him, but the orders came directly from the Emperor so he tried to think nothing of it.

In any event, he was almost done. He motioned to his squad to follow him. He approached the bridge-hatch, and yelled the agreed-upon code word.

"HARKEN!"

The door opened, to the sight of a wary group of Scythians, former servants of the Allied Nations.

"Is it time to initiate Operation Provenance?" Lieutenant Marko asked.

"About right," Captain Meinard declared.

The Spirit of Ragnablok along with its FTL tugs then disappeared under the noses of everyone involved in the raging battle. No one truly noticed though, instead directing all of their attention on simple survival. The cloaked Scythian destroyer Eyes and Ears that had destroyed all incoming projectiles trying to hit the Spirit of Ragnablok and had buffed its shields, also left the area.

Colette wrote:IR337| evacuated itself to a mass-produced frigate as the shields of its Conifer shell began to drain dramatically. It had managed to prove itself, even setting a new high score, but now fun-time was up. Thousands of enemy guns, including antimatter-projectors, XXL laser arrays, and Cavorite turrets, were bearing down on its ship-shell, fearing its impressive armament and it's hundreds of recorded kills in this battle alone. IR337| managed to download itself again just as its giant pine-cone exploded into a thousand pieces, the shields overloading the reactor.

The battle was beginning to turn against the Third Alliance, noticed Zweitekaiser Klaus. He did not care- the casualties they had already inflicted were enough, not to mention that they had completed their primary mission of destroying the AN- but still, he wanted a German victory. When things really turned bad, they would activate Der Vorsprung and go home and party with Bavarian beer.

Suddenly, one officer’s computer station began to beep rather loudly- the officer himself was lightly snoring from exhaustion.

Zweitekaiser Klaus descended to the lower deck, found the officer, and whipped him rather harshly with his pistol, yelling loudly. The officer stumbled onto the floor, while Klaus, fuming, examined the screen himself. It indicated five foreign objects coming in dangerous proximity to the SS Teutoburger.

“Shoot ‘em down” he ordered to the chief gunner.

“But sir, they indicate a signature denoting a Briktoid shi...”

The first explosion rocked the Teutoburger, followed quickly by a second. The doors connecting the bridge to the rest of the ship slammed shut as the ship rapidly depressurized, leaking air and crew into space.

A good portion of the crew ran for the escape pods when Zweitekaiser Klaus fired his pistol into the air.

“You cowards! Is this how you the naval academy taught you to handle these situations? Stand your ground and weather this storm like true German men! Or failing that, go write a letter to the AN minifig rights council.” he reprimanded. A few still dared to value their life above honor, and they each received a bullet personally from the Zweitekaiser as they ran.

The Zweitekaiser’s wish was granted, when the last Briktoid frigate slammed directly into the bridge.

---

Admiral Greenderp laughed to himself- supposedly, the Herr Direktor had been killed down on New York. Moreover, he saw the great saucer that was the SS Teutoburger explode into a great fireball as something big impacted it. Surely the Third Alliance would give up at this point.

He laughed so hard, he never noticed the gleaming silver sword obliterate his spine and viscera, as the perpetrator laughed madly to himself.